Essays on trust, boundaries and repair
Who gets the unedited version of you?
Most of what threatens a relationship arrives quietly: a good conversation, a kept secret, a question nobody asks aloud. These essays look at how closeness slips, and how it is rebuilt.
Start with this essayBrowse by topic
All essays
Friendship · Boundaries
When Does a Friend Become Something More?
Most affairs do not begin with desire. They begin with a good conversation, and three thresholds nobody notices crossing.
Read the essay · 3 minMeaning
Was It Something I Did?
The belief that a good marriage prevents affairs is nearly universal. The research does not support it.
Read the essay · 4 minCrisis
You Are Not Going Crazy
Discovering an affair is a trauma, and it behaves like one. What is happening to you has a name.
Read the essay · 4 minHonesty · Crisis
Why Can’t I Stop Asking?
Everyone says the past is the past. The need to know the whole story may be how healing works.
Read the essay · 3 minHonesty · Trust
What Do You Owe the Person You Hurt?
A letter from the one who strayed, and an answer about grief, clean breaks and remorse as a daily practice.
Read the essay · 4 minTrust
Can Trust Come Back?
Yes, and almost never through the grand gesture. It returns in small, boring moments that add up.
Read the essay · 4 minMeaning
How Did We Get Here?
To explain an affair is not to excuse it. Three maps for reading a relationship backwards.
Read the essay · 4 minForgiveness
What If Forgiving Doesn’t Mean It Was Okay?
Forgiveness is not forgetting, excusing or reuniting. It may be something else entirely.
Read the essay · 3 minBoundaries · Friendship
What Do You Do When an Old Flame Texts?
Love is not a boundary. Seven everyday fences that let a relationship grow in peace.
Read the essay · 3 minAbout
Every relationship has walls and windows. The question is where you have put them.
The Open Window is a collection of essays about friendship, fidelity and what it takes to repair trust. Each one ends with questions to sit with and one small thing to try.
The ideas and figures come mainly from the psychologist Dr Shirley Glass, author of Not “Just Friends” (2003). Most of her percentages describe couples she saw in therapy, so they speak for that group and not for everyone.
Each essay also draws on other research, listed at its end, and uses diagrams so that the ideas can be seen as well as read.
The letters and stories are composites. Names and details are invented. These essays are for reflection and do not replace counselling.